Established a facially neutral law is violation of equal protection
when it operates to discriminate in practice against a racial minority.

Facts: A San Franscisco law required that laundries could not be
operated in other than brick or stone buildings without approval by the
city. All but one of 88 non-chinese applicants were granted approval to
operate in a non-stone building. However, not a single one of 200
chinese applicants had been granted approval.

Issue: Whether the statistically unequal administration of a facially
neutral law is violation of equal protection when it operates to
discriminate in practice against a racial minority.

Holding: Yes.

Reasoning: Statistics show that the application of this law was
clearly discriminatory against chinese launderers. Even if the law is
neutral on its face, it is a violation of equal protection to enforce it
in an invidiously discriminatory manner.

Notes: In Swain v. Alabama, the court held that a prosecutor may use
peremptory challenges to strike all black jurors from a jury, without
violating equal protection unless a showing could be made that it was
systematic discrimination. However, in Batson v. Kentucky, the court
overruled Swain to hold that it was a violation of equal protection if
it was based on the justification that blacks, as a class, would be
unable to impartially consider the State's case against a black
defendant. Also, in Snowden v. Hughes, the court stated that "unequal
application" of statutes fair on their face is not a violation of
unequal protection "unless there is a showing of intentional or
purposeful discrimination."
=====

THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT

YICK WO
v.
HOPKINS, Sheriff, etc. [FN1]

IN ERROR TO THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA.

-----

WO LEE
v.
HOPKINS, Sheriff, etc.

APPEAL FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
FOR THE DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA.

These two cases were argued as one, and depend upon precisely the same
state of facts; the first coming here upon a writ of error to the
supreme court of the state of California, the second on appeal from the
circuit court of the United States for that district.

The plaintiff in error, Yick Wo, on August 24, 1885, petitioned the
supreme court of California for the writ of habeas corpus, alleging that
he was illegally deprived of his personal liberty by the defendant as
sheriff of the city and county of San Francisco. The sheriff made
return to the writ that he held the petitioner in custody by virtue of a
sentence of the police judge's court No. 2 of the city and county of San
Francisco, whereby he was found guilty of a violation of certain
ordinances of the board of supervisors of that county, and adjudged to
pay a fine of $10, and, in default of payment, be imprisoned in the
county jail at the rate of one day for each dollar of fine until said
fine should be satisfied; and a commitment in consequence of non-payment
of said fine.

The ordinances for the violation of which he had been found guilty are
set out as follows:

Order No. 1,569, passed May 26, 1880, prescribing the kind of buildings
in which laundries may be located.

'The people of the city and county of San Francisco do ordain as
follows: 'Section 1. It shall be unlawful, from and after the passage
of this order, for any person or persons to establish, maintain, or
carry on a laundry, within the corporate limits of the city and county
of San Francisco, without having first obtained the consent of the board
of supervisors, except the same be located in a building constructed
either of brick or stone.

'Sec. 2. It shall be unlawful for any person to erect, build, or
maintain, or cause to be erected, built, or maintained, over or upon the
roof of any building now erected, or which may hereafter be erected,
within the limits of said city and county, any scaffolding, without
first obtaining the written permission of the board of supervisors,
which permit shall state fully for what purpose said scaffolding is to
be erected and used, and such scaffolding shall not be used for any
other purpose than that designated in such permit.

'Sec. 3. Any person who shall violate any of the provisions of this
order shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction
thereof shall be punished by a fine of not more than one thousand
dollars, or by imprisonment in the county jail not more than six months,
or by both such fine and imprisonment.'

Order No. 1,587, passed July 28, 1880, the following section:

'Sec. 68. It shall be unlawful, from and after the passage of this
order, for any person or persons to establish, maintain, or carry on a
laundry within the corporate limits of the city and county of San
Francisco without having first obtained the consent of the board of
supervisors, except the same be located in a building constructed either
of brick or stone'

The following facts are also admitted on the record:

That petitioner is a native of China, and came to California in 1861,
and is still a subject of the emperor of China; that he has been engaged
in the laundry business in the same premises and building for 22 years
last past; that he had a license from the board of fire-wardens, dated
March 3, 1884, from which it appeared 'that the above-described premises
have been inspected by the board of fire-wardens, and upon such
inspection said board found all proper arrangements for carrying on the
business; that the stoves, washing and drying apparatus, and the
appliances for heating smoothing-irons, are in good condition, and that
their use is not dangerous to the surrounding property from fire, and
that all proper precautions have been taken to comply with the
provisions of order No. 1,617, defining 'the fire limits of the city and
county of San Francisco, and making regulations concerning the erection
and use of buildings in said city and county,' and of order No. 1,670,
'prohibiting the kindling, maintenance, and use of open fires in
houses;' that he had a certificate from the health officer that the same
premises had been inspected by him, and that he found that they were
properly and sufficiently drained, and that all proper arrangements for
carrying on the business of a laundry, without injury to the sanitary
condition of the neighborhood, had been complied with; that the city
license of the petitioner was in force, and expired October 1, 1885; and
that the petitioner applied to the board of supervisors, June 1, 1885,
for consent of said board to maintain and carry on his laundry, but that
said board, on July 1, 1885, refused said consent.'

It is also admitted to be true, as alleged in the petition, that on
February 24, 1880, 'there were about 320 laundries in the city and
county of San Francisco, of which about 240 were owned and conducted by
subjects of China, and of the whole number, viz., 320, about 310 were
constructed of wood, the same material that constitutes ninetenths of
the houses in the city of San Francisco. The capital thus invested by
the subjects of China was not less than two hundred thousand dollars,
and they paid annually for rent, license, taxes, gas, and water about
one hundred and eighty thousand dollars.'

It is alleged in the petition that 'your petitioner, and more than one
hundred and fifty of his countrymen, have been arrested upon the charge
of carrying on business without having such special consent, while those
who are not subjects of China, and who ar conducting eighty odd
laundries under similar conditions, are left unmolested, and free to
enjoy the enhanced trade and profits arising from this hurtful and
unfair discrimination. The business of your petitioners, and of those
of his countrymen similarly situated, is greatly impaired, and in many
cases practically ruined, by this system of oppression to one kind of
men, and favoritism to all others.'

The statement therein contained as to the arrest, etc., is admitted to
be true, with the qualification only that the 80-odd laundries referred
to are in wooden buildings without scaffolds on the roofs. It is also
admitted 'that petitioner and 200 of his countrymen similarly situated
petitioned the board of supervisors for permission to continue their
business in the various houses which they had been occupying and using
for laundries for more than twenty years, and such petitions were
denied, and all the petitions of those who were not Chinese, with one
exception of Mrs. Mary Meagles, were granted.'

By section 11 of article 11 of the constitution of California it is
provided that 'any county, city, town, or township may make and enforce
within its limits all such local, police, sanitary, and other
regulations as are not in conflict with general laws.' By section 74 of
the act of April 19, 1856, usually known as the 'Consolidation Act,' the
board of supervisors is empowered, among other things, 'to provide by
regulation for the prevention and summary removal of nuisances to public
health, the prevention of contagious diseases; * * * to prohibit the
erection of wooden buildings within any fixed limits where the streets
shall have been established and graded; * * * to regulate the sale,
storage, and use of gunpowder, or other explosive or combustible
materials and substances, and make all needful regulations for
protection against fire; to make such regulations concerning the
erection and use of buildings as may be necessary for the safety of the
inhabitants.'

The supreme court of California, in the opinion pronouncing the judgment
in this case, said: 'The board of supervisors, under the several
statutes conferring authority upon them, has the power to prohibit or
regulate all occupations which are against good morals, contrary to
public order and decency, or dangerous to the public safety. Clothes-
washing is certainly not opposed to good morals, or subversive of public
order or decency, but when conducted in given localities it may be
highly dangerous to the public safety. Of this fact the supervisors are
made the judges, and, having taken action in the premises, we do not
find that they have prohibited the establishment of laundries, but they
have, as they well might do, regulated the places at which they should
be established, the character of the buildings in which they are to be
maintained, etc. The process of washing is not prohibited by thus
regulating the places at which and the surroundings by which it must be
exercised. The order No. 1,569 and section 68 of order No. 1,587 are
not in contravention of common right, or unjust, unequal, partial, or
oppressive, in such sense as authorizes us in this proceeding to
pronounce them invalid.' After answering the position taken in behalf of
the petitioner, that the ordinances in question had been repealed, the
court adds: 'We have not deemed it necessary to discuss the question in
the light of supposed infringement of petitioner's rights under the
constitution of the United States, for the reason that we think the
principles upon which contention on that head can be based have in
effect been set at rest by the cases of Barbier v.Connolly, 113 U. S.
27, and Soon Hing v.Crowley, 113 U. S. 703.' The writ was accordingly
discharged, and the prisoner remanded.

In the other case, the appellant, Wo Lee, petitioned for his discharge
from an alleged illegal imprisonment, upon a state of facts, shown upon
the record, precisely similar to that in the Case of Yick Wo. In
disposing of the application, the learned Circuit Judge SAWYER, in his
opinion, (26 Fed. Rep. 471,) after quoting the ordinance in question,
proceeded at length as follows:

'Thus, in a territory some ten miles wide by fifteen or more miles long,
much of it still occupied as mere farming and pasturage lands, and much
of it unoccupied sand banks, in many places without a building within a
quarter or half a mile of each other, including the isolated and almost
wholly unoccupied Goat island, the right to carry on this, when properly
guarded, harmless and necessary occupation, in a wooden building, is not
made to depend upon any prescribed conditions giving a right to anybody
complying with them, but upon the consent or arbitrary will of the board
of supervisors. In three-fourths of the territory covered by the
ordinance there is no more need of prohibiting or regulating laundries
than if they were located in any portion of the farming regions of the
state. Hitherto the regulation of laundries has been limited to the
thickly-settled portions of the city. Why this unnecessary extension of
the limits affected, if not designed to prevent the establishment of
laundries, after a compulsory removal from their present locations,
within practicable reach of the customers or their proprietors? And the
uncontradicted petition shows that all Chinese applications are, in
fact, denied, and those of Caucasians granted; thus, in fact, making the
discriminations in the administration of the ordinance which its terms
permit. The fact that the right to give consent is reserved in the
ordinance shows that carrying on the laundry business in wooden
buildings is not deemed of itself necessarily dangerous. It must be
apparent to every well-informed mind that a fire, properly guarded, for
laundry purposes, in a wooden building, is just as necessary, and no
more dangerous, than a fire for cooking purposes or for warming a house.
If the ordinance under consideration is valid, then the board of
supervisors can pass a valid ordinance preventing the maintenance, in a
wooden building, of a cooking-stove, heating apparatus, or a restaurant,
within the boundaries of the city and county of San Francisco, without
the consent of that body, arbitrarily given or withheld, as their
prejudices or other motives may dictate. If it is competent for the
board of supervisors to pass a valid ordinance prohibiting the
inhabitants of San Francisco from following any ordinary, proper, and
necessary calling within the limits of the city and county, except at
its arbitrary and unregulated discretion and special consent -- and it
can do so if this ordinance is valid -- then it seems to us that there
has been a wide departure from the principles that have heretofore been
supposed to guard and protect the rights, property, and liberties of the
American people. And if, by an ordinance general in its terms and form,
like the one in question, by reserving an arbitrary discretion in the
enacting body to grant or deny permission to engage in a proper and
necessary calling, a discrimination against any class can be made in its
execution, thereby evading and in effect nullifying the provisions of
the national constitution, then the insertion of provisions to guard the
rights of every class and person in that instrument was a vain and
futile act.

'The effect of the execution of this ordinance in the manner indicated
in the record would seem to be necessarily to close up the many Chinese
laundries now existing, or compel their owners to pull down their
present buildings and reconstruct of brick or stone, or to drive them
outside the city and county of San Francisco, to the adjoining counties,
beyond the convenient reach of customers, either of which results would
be little short of absolute confiscation of the large amount of property
shown to be now, and to have been for a long time, invested in these
occupations. If this would not be depriving such parties of their
property without due process of law, it would be difficult to say what
would effect that prohibited result. The necessary tendency, if not the
specific purpose, of this ordinance, and of enforcing it in the manner
indicated in the record, is to drive out of business all the numerous
small laundries, especially those owned by Chinese, and give a monopoly
of the business to the large institutions established and carried on by
means of large associated Caucasian capital. If the facts appearing on
the face of the ordinance, on the petition and return, and admitted in
the case, and shown by the notorious public and municipal history of the
times, indicate a purpose to drive out the Chinese laundrymen, and not
merely to regulate the business for the public safety, does it not
disclose a case of violation of the provisions of the fourteenth
amendment to the national constitution, and of the treaty between the
United States and China, in more than one particular?
* * *

If this means prohibition of the occupation, and a destruction of the
business and property, of the Chinese laundrymen in San Francisco,--as
it seems to us this must be the effect of executing the ordinance,--and
not merely the proper regulation of the business, then there is
discrimination, and a violation of other highly important rights secured
by the fourteenth amendment and the treaty. That it does mean
prohibition, as to the Chinese, it seems to us must be apparent to every
citizen of San Francisco who has been here long enough to be familiar
with the course of an active and aggressive branch of public opinion and
of public notorious events. Can a court be blind to what must be
necessarily known to every intelligent person in the state? See Ah Kow
v. Nunan, 5 Sawy. 560; Sparrow v. Strong, 3 Wall. 104; Brown v. Piper,
91 U. S. 42.'

But, in deference to the decision of the supreme court of California in
the Case of Yick Wo, and contrary to his own opinion as thus expressed,
the circuit judge discharged the writ and remanded the prisoner.

MATTHEWS, J.

In the case of the petitioner, brought here by writ of error to the
supreme court of California, our jurisdiction is limited to the question
whether the plaintiff in error has been denied a right in violation of
the constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States. The question
whether his imprisonment is illegal, under the constitution and laws of
the state, is not open to us.

And although that question might have been considered in the circuit
court in the application made to it, and by this court on appeal from
its order, yet judicial propriety is best consulted by accepting the
judgment of the state court upon the points involved in that inquiry.
That, however, does not preclude this court from putting upon the
ordinances of the supervisors of the county and city of San Francisco an
independent construction; for the determination of the question whether
the proceedings under these ordinances, and in enforcement of them, are
in conflict with the constitution and laws of the United States,
necessarily involves the meaning of the ordinances, which, for that
purpose, we are required to ascertain and adjudge.

We are consequently constrained, at the outset, to differ from the
supreme court of California upon the real meaning of the ordinances in
question. That court considered these ordinances as vesting in the
board of supervisors a not unusual discretion in granting or withholding
their assent to the use of wooden buildings as laundries, to be
exercised in reference to the circumstances of each case, with a view to
the protection of the public against the dangers of fire. We are not
able to concur in that interpretation of the power conferred upon the
supervisors. There is nothing in the ordinances which points to such a
regulation of the business of keeping and conducting laundries. They
seem intended to confer, and actually to confer, not a discretion to be
exercised upon a consideration of the circumstances of each case, but a
naked and arbitrary power to give or withhold consent, not only as to
places, but as to persons; so that, if an applicant for such consent,
being in every way a competent and qualified person, and having complied
with every reasonable condition demanded by any public interest, should,
failing to obtain the requisite consent of the supervisors to the
prosecution of his business, apply for redress by the judicial process
of mandamus to require the supervisors to consider and act upon his
case, it would be a sufficient answer for them to say that the law had
conferred upon them authority to withhold their assent, without reason
and without responsibility. The power given to them is not confided to
their discretion in the legal sense of that term, but is granted to
their mere will. It is purely arbitrary, and acknowledges neither
guidance nor restraint.

This erroneous view of the ordinances in question led the supreme court
of California into the further error of holding that they were justified
by the decisions of this court in the cases of Barbier v. Connelly,113
U. S. 27, S. C. 5 Sup. Ct. Rep. 357, and Soon Hing v.Crowley, 113 U. S.
703, S. C. 5 Sup. Ct. Rep. 730. In both of these cases the ordinance
involved was simply a prohibition to carry on the washing and ironing of
clothes in public laundries and wash houses, within certain prescribed
limits of the city and county of San Francisco, from 10 o'clock at night
until 6 o'clock in the morning of the following day. This provision was
held to be purely a police regulation, within the competency of any
municipality possessed of the ordinary powers belonging to such bodies,-
-a necessary measure of precaution in a city composed largely of wooden
buildings, like San Francisco, in the application of which there was no
invidious discrimination against any one within the prescribed limits;
all persons engaged in the same business being treated alike, and
subject to the same restrictions, and entitled to the same privileges,
under similar conditions. For these reasons that ordinance was adjudged
not to be within the prohibitions of the fourteenth amendment to the
constitution of the United States, which, it was said in the first case
cited, 'undoubtedly intended, not only that there should be no arbitrary
deprivation of life or liberty, or arbitrary spoliation of property, but
that equal protection and security should be given to all under like
circumstances in the enjoyment of their personal and civil rights; that
all persons should be equally entitled to pursue their happiness, and
acquire and enjoy property; that they should have like access to the
courts of the country for the protection of their persons and property,
the prevention and redress of wrongs, and the enforcement of contracts;
that no impediment should be interposed to the pursuits of any one,
except as applied to the same pursuits by others under like
circumstances; that no greater burdens should be laid upon one than are
laid upon others in the same calling and condition; and that, in the
administration of criminal justice, no different or higher punishment
should be imposed upon one than such as is prescribed to all for like
offenses.
* * *

Class legislation, discriminating against some and favoring others, is
prohibited; but legislation which, in carrying out a public purpose, is
limited in its application, if, within the sphere of its operation, it
affects alike all persons similarly situated, is not within the
amendment.' The ordinance drawn in question in the present case is of a
very different character. It does not prescribe a rule and conditions,
for the regulation of the use of property for laundry purposes, to which
all similarly situated may conform. It allows, without restriction, the
use for such purposes of buildings of brick or stone; but, as to wooden
buildings, constituting nearly all those in previous use, it divides the
owners or occupiers into two classes, not having respect to their
personal character and qualifications for the business, nor the
situation and nature and adaptation of the buildings themselves, but
merely by an arbitrary line, on one side of which are those who are
permitted to pursue their industry by the mere will and consent of the
supervisors, and on the other those from whom that consent is withheld,
at their mere will and pleasure. And both classes are alike only in
this: that they are tenants at will, under the supervisors, of their
means of living. The ordinance, therefore, also differs from the not
unusual case where discretion is lodged by law in public officers or
bodies to grant or withhold licenses to keep taverns, or places for the
sale of spirituous liquors, and the like, when one of the conditions is
that the applicant shall be a fit person for the exercise of the
privilege, because in such cases the fact of fitness is submitted to the
judgment of the officer, and calls for the exercise of a discretion of a
judicial nature.

The rights of the petitioners, as affected by the proceedings of which
they complain, are not less because they are aliens and subjects of the
emperor of China. By the third article of the treaty between this
government and that of China, concluded November 17, 1880, (22 St. 827),
it is stipulated: 'If Chinese laborers, or Chinese of any other class,
now either permanently or temporarily residing in the territory of the
United States, meet with ill treatment at the hands of any other
persons, the government of the United States will exert all its powers
to devise measures for their protection, and to secure to them the same
rights, privileges, immunities, and exemptions as may be enjoyed by the
citizens or subjects of the most favored nation, and to which they are
entitled by treaty.' The fourteenth amendment to the constitution is
not confined to the protection of citizens. It says: 'Nor shall any
state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due
process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal
protection of the laws.' These provisions are universal in their
application, to all persons within the territorial jurisdiction, without
regard to any differences of race, of color, or of nationality; and the
equal protection of the laws is a pledge of the protection of equal
laws. It is accordingly enacted by section 1977 of the Revised Statutes
that 'all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall
have the same right, in every state and territory, to make and enforce
contracts, to sue, be parties, give evidence, and to the full and equal
benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and
property as is enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like
punishment, pains, penalties, taxes, licenses, and exactions of every
kind, and to no other.' The questions we have to consider and decide in
these cases, therefore, are to be treated as involving the rights of
every citizen of the United States equally with those of the strangers
and aliens who now invoke the jurisdiction of the court.

It is contended on the part of the petitioners that the ordinances for
violations of which they are severally sentenced to imprisonment are
void on their face, as being within the prohibitions of the fourteenth
amendment, and, in the alternative, if not so, that they are void by
reason of their administration, operating unequally, so as to punish in
the present petitioners what is permitted to others as lawful, without
any distinction of circumstances,--an unjust and illegal discrimination,
it is claimed, which, though not made expressly by the ordinances, is
made possible by them.

When we consider the nature and the theory of our institutions of
government, the principles upon which they are supposed to rest, and
review the history of their development, we are constrained to conclude
that they do not mean to leave room for the play and action of purely
personal and arbitrary power. Sovereignty itself is, of course, not
subject to law, for it is the author and source of law; but in our
system, while sovereign powers are delegated to the agencies of
government, sovereignty itself remains with the people, by whom and for
whom all government exists and acts. And the law is the definition and
limitation of power. It is, indeed, quite true that there must always
be lodged somewhere, and in some person or body, the authority of final
decision; and in many cases of mere administration, the responsibility
is purely political, no appeal lying except to the ultimate tribunal of
the public judgment, exercised either in the pressure of opinion, or by
means of the suffrage. But the fundamental rights to life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness, considered as individual possessions, are
secured by those maxims of constitutional law which are the monuments
showing the victorious progress of the race in securing to men the
blessings of civilization under the reign of just and equal laws, so
that, in the famous language of the Massachusetts bill of rights, the
government of the commonwealth 'may be a government of laws and not of
men.' For the very idea that one man may be compelled to hold his life,
or the means of living, or any material right essential to the enjoyment
of life, at the mere will of another, seems to be intolerable in any
country where freedom prevails, as being the essence of slavery itself.

There are many illustrations that might be given of this truth, which
would make manifest that it was self-evident in the light of our system
of jurisprudence. The case of the political franchise of voting is one.
Though not regarded strictly as a natural right, but as a privilege
merely conceded by society, according to its will, under certain
conditions, nevertheless it is regarded as a fundamental political
right, because preservative of all rights.

In reference to that right, it was declared by the supreme judicial
court of Massachusetts, in Capen v. Foster, 12 Pick. 485, 488, in the
words of Chief Justice SHAW, 'that in all cases where the constitution
has conferred a political right or privilege, and where the constitution
has not particularly designated the manner in which that right is to be
exercised, it is clearly within the just and constitutional limits of
the legislative power to adopt any reasonable and uniform regulations,
in regard to the time and mode of exercising that right, which are
designed to secure and facilitate the exercise of such right in a
prompt, orderly, and convenient manner;' nevertheless, 'such a
construction would afford no warrant for such an exercise of legislative
power as, under the pretense and color of regulating, should subvert or
injuriously restrain, the right itself.' It has accordingly been held
generally in the states that whether the particular provisions of an act
of legislation establishing means for ascertaining the qualifications of
those entitled to vote, and making previous registration in lists of
such, a condition precedent to the exercise of the right, were or were
not reasonable regulations, and accordingly valid or void, was always
open to inquiry, as a judicial question. See Daggett v. Hudson, 3 N. E.
Rep. 538, decided by the supreme court of Ohio, where many of the cases
are collected; Monroe v. Collins, 17 Ohio St. 666.

The same principle has been more freely extended to the quasi
legislative acts of inferior municipal bodies, in respect to which it is
an ancient jurisdiction of judicial tribunals to pronounce upon the
reasonableness and consequent validity of their by-laws. In respect to
these it was the doctrine that every by-law must be reasonable, not
inconsistent with the charter of the corporation, nor with any statute
of parliament, nor with the general principles of the common law of the
land, particularly those having relation to the liberty of the subject,
or the rights of private property. Dill. Mun. Corp. (3d Ed.) s 319, and
cases cited in notes. Accordingly, in the case of State v.Cincinnati
Gas-light & Coke Co., 18 Ohio St. 262, 300, an ordinance of the city
council purporting to fix the price to be charged for gas, under an
authority of law giving discretionary power to do so, was held to be
bad, if passed in bad faith, fixing an unreasonable price, for the
fraudulent purpose of compelling the gas company to submit to an unfair
appraisement of their works. And a similar question, very pertinent to
the one in the present cases, was decided by the court of appeals of
Maryland in the case of City of Baltimore v. Radecke, 49 Md. 217. In
that case the defendant had erected and used a steam-engine, in the
prosecution of his business as a carpenter and box-maker in the city of
Baltimore, under a permit from the mayor and city council, which
contained a condition that the engine was 'to be removed after six
months' notice to that effect from the mayor.' After such notice, and
refusal to conform to it, a suit was instituted to recover the penalty
provided by the ordinance, to restrain the prosecution of which a bill
in equity was filed. The court holding the opinion that 'there may be a
case in which an ordinance, passed under grants of power like those we
have cited, is so clearly unreasonable, so arbitrary, oppressive, or
partial, as to raise the presumption that the legislature never intended
to confer the power to pass it, and to justify the courts in interfering
and setting it aside as a plain abuse of authority,' it proceeds to
speak, with regard to the ordinance in question, in relation to the use
of steam-engines, as follows: 'It does not profess to prescribe
regulations for their construction, location, or use; nor require such
precautions and safeguards to be provided by those who own and use them
as are best calculated to render them less dangerous to life and
property; nor does it restrain their use in box factories and other
similar establishments within certain defined limits; not in any other
way attempt to promote their safety and security without destroying
their usefulness. But it commits to the unrestrained will of a single
public officer the power to notify every person who now employs a steam-
engine in the prosecution of any business in the city of Baltimore to
cease to do so, and, by providing compulsory fines for every day's
disobedience of such notice and order of removal, renders his power over
the use of steam in that city practically absolute, so that he may
prohibit its use altogether. But if he should not choose to do this,
but only to act in particular cases, there is nothing in the ordinance
to guide or control his action. It lays down no rules by which its
impartial execution can be secured, or partiality and oppression
prevented. It is clear that giving and enforcing these notices may, and
quite likely will, bring ruin to the business of those against whom they
are directed, while others, from whom they are withheld, may be actually
benefited by what is thus done to their neighbors; and, when we remember
that this action of non-action may proceed from enmity or prejudice,
from partisan zeal or animosity, from favoritism and other improper
influences and motives easy of concealment, and difficult to be detected
and exposed, it becomes unnecessary to suggest or comment upon the
injustice capable of being wrought under cover of such a power, for that
becomes apparent to every one who gives to the subject a moment's
consideration. In fact, an ordinance which clothes a single individual
with such power hardly falls within the domain of law, and we are
constrained to pronounce it inoperative and void.' This conclusion, and
the reasoning on which it is based, are deductions from the face of the
ordinance, as to its necessary pendency and ultimate actual operation.

In the present cases, we are not obliged to reason from the probable to
the actual, and pass upon the validity of the ordinances complained of,
as tried merely by the opportunities which their terms afford, of
unequal and unjust discrimination in their administration; for the cases
present the ordinances in actual operation, and the facts shown
establish an administration directed so exclusively against a particular
class of persons as to warrant and require the conclusion that, whatever
may have been the intent of the ordinances as adopted, they are applied
by the public authorities charged with their administration, and thus
representing the state itself, with a mind so unequal and oppressive as
to amount to a practical denial by the state of that equal protection of
the laws which is secured to the petitioners, as to all other persons,
by the broad and benign provisions of the fourteenth amendment to the
constitution of the United States. Though the law itself be fair on its
face, and impartial in appearance, yet, if it is applied and
administered by public authority with an evil eye and an unequal hand,
so as practically to make unjust and illegal discriminations between
persons in similar circumstances, material to their rights, the denial
of equal justice is still within the prohibition of the constitution.
This principle of interpretation has been sanctioned by this court in
Henderson v.Mayor of New York, 92 U. S. 259; Chy Luny v.Freeman, 92 U.
S. 275;Ex parte Virginia, 100 U. S. 339; Neal v.Delaware, 103 U.S. 370;
and Soon Hing v.Crowley, 113 U. S. 703.

The present cases, as shown by the facts disclosed in the record, are
within this class. It appears that both petitioners have complied with
every requisite deemed by the law, or by the public officers charged
with its administration, necessary for the protection of neighboring
property from fire, or as a precaution against injury to the public
health. No reason whatever, except the will of the supervisors, is
assigned why they should not be permitted to carry on, in the accustomed
manner, their harmless and useful occupation, on which they depend for a
livelihood; and while this consent of the supervisors is withheld from
them, and from 200 others who have also petitioned, all of whom happen
to be Chinese subjects, 80 others, not Chinese subjects, are permitted
to carry on the same business under similar conditions. The fact of
this discrimination is admitted. No reason for it is shown, and the
conclusion cannot be resisted that no reason for it exists except
hostility to the race and nationality to which the petitioners belong,
and which, in the eye of the law, is not justified. The discrimination
is therefore illegal, and the public administration which enforces it is
a denial of the equal protection of the laws, and a violation of the
fourteenth amendment of the constitution. The imprisonment of the
petitioners is therefore illegal, and they must be discharged. To this
end the judgment of the supreme court of California in the Case of Yick
Wo, and that of the circuit court of the United States for the district
of California in the Case of Wo Lee, are severally reversed, and the
cases remanded, each to the proper court, with directions to discharge
the petitioners from custody and imprisonment.

FN1 S. C. 9 Pac. Rep. 139.

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